Jane's Stuff

Jane enjoys drawing and painting. Join her. Doodling, drawing, ART - all of it is great for brain health! Check out Jane's Youtube channel below. And if you see a picture on my blog you would like to purchase send Jane an email (or check out Jane's store).

Finally, I've begun my watercolor painting for the Humane Society Art Auction. I just didn't know what to do, and I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do.

I cut some watercolor paper to fit the frame I will use, and taped it with some Frog tape for delicate surfaces. Then I blocked off my surface and spattered cold coffee onto the surface. I moved it around and this is what I've come up with. Tomorrow I will begin to find the dogs/cats/people sitting on a couch together....or something like that:

Once it dries I'll have to iron out the paper because even though it is good quality watercolor paper it still bubbled up a bit. I like to do this kind of thing. It is really letting the project lead. Plus, it is like a treasure hunt.

The sketch on the right was kind of my own version. I have been using a kind of pen that bleeds through in the notebook I'm using so I use the backside and trace some of the lines that bleed through and create something from my tracings. Mr. Camel Hybrid is my result. That is my daughter dancing on top of him. His name is Mr. Blue Face.

This page is from the other day.

I'm really enjoying sketching but it is getting me kind of bummed out. I know i am in a rush. Am I off on a silly tangent? What do you think? Do you see any style emerging from my stuff?

I went to Joan Aiken's website today. Joan is an author and an artist (though best known for her writing). I have just recently discovered her whimsical writings. I love them! But I read about her first book. She turned in her own drawings with them, and the drawings were seen as amaturish and wholly rejected. I thought, will that be me? I really don't know. I did find this weekend that I started a story after drawing a little person. This person is in the scribbles above. The skinny one with crazy colored hair is my Maggie. And I made a story fragment about her going to see her new next door neighbor who is a witch. She goes and asks for a fattening potion. She gets a growing potion instead....or maybe that was through mail-order. The witch came later.

Maybe this is the witch in this picture. I don't know. I drew her after reading a fairy tale that had an evil witch in it. The little girl is cute. The dots are bleeding through from the other side -- they belong to a snail with a flowery shell.

I don't really know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm in a waiting mode. While I spend a few minutes every day on sketching, I also am thinking about the BBC (the Blunt Bible Club), a once-a-week club for elementary students I'm beginning in December. And then I think about my lack of income -- my husband works so hard. I so wish my writing and such were bringing something in. I keep telling him that one day he'll be a kept man. He looks forward to that day!

But as I wrote that I remember the story of one of my favorite authors -- Dick King-Smith. You might know a couple of his books. They were made into movies: Babe and The Water Horse.

Mr King-Smith didn't become an author until he was in his sixties! That always gives me hope. Before that he was an unsuccessful farmer and a teacher (and a few other things that I can't remember). I linked his autobiography on his name. It is called Chewing the Cud.

I was talking last night at the writers group how ridiculous it was for me to set up this website, but you know what -- if I fail as an illustrator so what. I at least tried.

But I don't plan on failing.

And this keeps me accountable.

And guess what -- my made my very first creature out of a blob via instructions I got from Carla Sonheim's website.

I took photos so see below my process and the finished product. I ended up using too much pen but overall I think Red Nose is kind of cute (that's the cat's name). I enjoyed the process. Last night all I could think of was drawing my first blobs today.

So here are the pictures:

These are the blobs I ended up drawing. They were originally in pencil, but you couldn't see them in the photo so I went over them with a black sharpie. Incidentally I got all of them in my living room!

Here are the materials I gathered: a roll of watercolor paper I had bought months ago for a friend's project. Watercolors (and I mainly used the kind kids often have on hand -- I wanted to see if I could use cheap stuff to do the work). Pens, a #2 pencil, a sharpener, paintbrushes, index cards -- those are what I drew the blobs on.

I went with this blob. I copied it in pencil onto the paper. Then I went over it with green watercolor.

I turned the picture to the left and ended up using that nose looking thing for a tail. At this point I did a couple of layers of green and pink on the outline.

I added pencil for shading and hair. I also filled in the eyes a bit. I am really liking him at this stage. I add a moon and a window because the light needs to come from somewhere.

Here is the finished creature. I don't like his back left and I think I got too much pen on him but overall I like him. And I absolutely love him as being my very first blob project and the first step as an illustrator. Would love to do another but have to do some writing.

One last photo -- old yogurt lids or ice cream lids make great palettes. You can just throw them away when you're done. Also if you are teaching a bunch of kids they each can have their own.